Title: Nights of GethsemaneAuthor: StarCrossedBetas: yivel, magic_helmet, and whitestar_alphaRating: NC-17, XXXGenre: Angst, Romance, Slash, Het, Drama, MysteryPairing: Snape/Harry, Harry/Ginny, and a few others scattered aroundBook Length: Finished ~350,000Summary: Harry is a prisoner of the Dark Lord and Snape his prison guard. Completely cut off from the outside world, Harry struggles to hold himself intact as he is forced to rely on Snape for everything. Yet Snape may not be all that he appears.... Warnings: Highlight to read. *

*Author’s notes: I put a lot of literature references in this fiction. While it is not required to understand the plot, I love all these books so I think you should read them anyway!The works involved are:Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo 3/4th of the textWiki page with summaryBilly-Budd by Herman Melville full textWiki page with summaryMyth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus full textFrankenstein by Mary Shelley full textWiki page with summaryTragical History of Doctor Faustus and Goethe's Faust You can read all about Faust's legend here.Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I never will. I wrote this purely to practice my English skills and I will never make a cent off of it. Warner Brothers and JK Rowling own all rights to Harry Potter. The title comes from Camus's work on Sisyphus.All characters depicted in sexual situations in this story are of legal age to engage in such acts.This work is intended for adults only and if you are under aged in your location or forbidden from reading, please do not read.Notes: I could not have done this without the help of many amazing people. I have had way too many helpers to name all of them, but an especially big thanks to tasha18, Rai, isilel, Jessica, Jon, Angia, and Georgia who really picked apart this story and pointed out where it needed extra help. And thank you very, very much to all the readers and reviewers who helped teach me how to write.P.S. If you are like me and sometimes like to read the sex scenes first to see if the story is worth reading, I put the word "cock" in every sexual scene of decent length. Just Ctrl+F to find them.

He woke in a room that was far too bright. He shut his eyes before giving waking a second chance. The next glance revealed a room still painfully white. He stared at the ceiling until he remembered that he wore glasses. He attempted to sit up in order to look for them, but his limbs were far too heavy to move. Closing his eyes, he rested before his third attempt.

This time, he was able to sit up. He immediately regretted doing so as his vision swam and red joined white in a confusing dance. After a few minutes, his brain finally made sense of the dizzying swirl of colours and he became aware of the fact that he was resting on a crimson bed in a white room. After that, he realized he was naked.

“Why am I naked?” he asked. He ran his hands down his chest and over his legs to make sure they really belonged to him. Fresh scars, bruises, and dried blood liberally covered nearly every inch he could see. He tried to make his legs obey him but they didn’t want to move. He collapsed back on the bed and attempted to gather his thoughts. He remembered his name: Harry Potter. He remembered what he was: a wizard. Everything else was sort of blurry.

“Accio glasses,” he murmured but nothing happened. He opened his eyes to examine his hands in case the fault lay there found manacles below his wrists. They were made of metal that looked silvery to his fuzzy vision. Running his fingers around the bumpy surface of the one on his left wrist, he found four half rings which ran parallel to his arm. They were evenly spaced from each other and just large enough to allow his pinky finger to slide through up to the first knuckle. He explored the rest of his body to make sure he wasn’t wearing something else strange, but he didn’t find anything. As his fingers ran over the recently healed scars, he wondered why he didn’t ache all over. He poked at a particularly nasty looking bruise he discovered on his upper right arm without any feeling of pain.

After he grew bored of prodding his bruises and cuts, he attempted to get out of bed again. This time, his legs obeyed him and he was able to stumble over to a sink although he had to grab onto it as soon as he reached it in order to stay on his feet. He noticed coloured blobs resting along the narrow shelf behind the faucet and, clutching the sink with one hand, touched each one in turn, discovering a toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, soap, and a comb. He turned on the taps and let the water run over his fingers for a minute before closing them and examining the toilet which was next to the sink, along with a white fluffy towel and toilet paper.

Harry flushed the toilet to make sure it worked, and then attempted to look around the room again. There appeared to be one white wall that was striped with black bars while the floor, the ceiling, and all the other walls were dazzling white. He saw what appeared to be a dark wooden table and two matching chairs. Harry stumbled over to them and took a moment to rest in one of the chairs. It was surprisingly soft for seeming to have been made out of wood. He ran his fingers over the gentle curves and wished he had his glasses.

Once he caught his breath and his limbs stopped shaking, Harry got to his feet and approached the striped wall. As he moved closer he realised that what his brain had interpreted as stripes were actually bars. He grabbed onto the two nearest to him and wondered where the hell he was. He forced his protesting limbs into movement as he stumbled around the room trying to find an exit.

Memories of his two best friends flooded into his brain “I have to get out of here! Ron! Hermione!” He remembered that he was supposed to be with them but little else. Where was he? How had he gotten here? Where had his friends gone?

He stumbled back over to the bars and tried to use magic and strength to tear them from their foundations. “Let me out of here!” He yanked hard on the bars but they remained immobile. A healed cut on his arm split open but he didn’t feel pain even as blood dripped to the floor.

“Calm down, Potter. You will only give yourself more injuries at this rate.” The voice flowed over him and ignited something in his brain.

“Snape!” Harry squinted at the black blob that was moving towards him on the opposite side of the bars. All he could see was black with a tiny splash of white near the top. Snape stopped about five feet away from him. Harry gaped up at him as his brain tried to remember who Snape was and how he should react to seeing him. He had the feeling he didn’t like him which was only intensified when Snape slowly looked him up and down, his head moving slightly as he examined Harry. Harry stared at Snape and Snape stared at Harry; the quiet of the room only interrupted by the soft patter of blood.

“You are a mess.”

Harry glanced down at himself and suddenly realized he was naked. He yelped and scurried back over to the bed, snatching one of the crimson sheets off and wrapping it around his torso like a toga. “Why am I naked, you pervert!?”

Snape clicked his tongue in disagreement. “I am not attracted to under developed little boys-“

“I’m not–“

“-I made the mistake of assuming you were competent enough as a wizard to spell pockets into your clothing in order to hide artefacts. I destroyed the rags as a precaution. Now, you will come with me and take a bath. Scorgify can only clean so much, and I've no desire for you to smear blood and dirt about my rooms. Do not try and resist -- you are in no position to fight my magic as you are.”

A bath sounded wonderful, very relaxing. A part of Harry’s brain screamed at him to stay far away from Snape but the majority of him was focused on the mental picture that had popped up when Snape first said the word ‘bath.’ He saw himself resting in a tub filled with warm water. He stood up, clutching his toga in fisted hands, and walked over to Snape. The bars parted for him and he stepped through.

“First door on your right,” commanded Snape although he seemed a bit surprised that Harry did not object to the idea of a bath. Harry plodded down the short hallway which had a door on the left and two doors on the right. He opened the one nearest to him and stepped into a rather nice bathroom. A plush dark blue bathmat spread wide across the floor, matching towels on a narrow rack. Another toilet and sink rested in this room, although these were cut out of marble. A wide mirror rose above the sink and reflected a large cabinet, which was made of wood the same colour as the table in his room. He heard Snape step in the room behind him and close the door. There was a twist of a faucet and water poured into the tub.

“Stop gawking and get in,” snapped Snape.

Harry unwrapped his sheet and stepped into the warm water. He lowered himself carefully, his limbs still shaky and difficult to control. Once he had settled himself he peered up at Snape who was leaning against the wall between the sink and the cabinet. “Are you going to bathe too?”

There was a long silence before Snape answered, “Of course not, I’m only here to make sure you don’t kill yourself.”

“Why would I do that?” Harry wondered in confusion as he grabbed a flannel and rubbed it against the soap.

Snape didn’t answer.

“Oh, d’you mean this?” He gestured to the recently opened cut on his arm that had finally stopped bleeding. “It doesn’t hurt at all. Nothing hurts.”

“I plied you with a very ample dose of painkillers. Quite frankly, I’m amazed you are able to walk right now, but you’ve always been annoyingly stubborn and unable to know when you should just sit down and shut up,” grumbled Snape.

“I am sitting now,” Harry pointed out.

“Then perhaps you should work on the second part.”

Harry ran the wash cloth over his body and tried to gather his thoughts. “Snape, Snape, Snape. I remember the name but not much else…”

Snape moved to kneel by the edge of the tub. “Maybe you hit your head harder than we thought.” He lifted his hand to touch the left side of Harry’s skull above his ear. Pain thrummed through Harry’s head and he could tell that it would have been excruciating without the painkillers. “Ow! That hurt.”

Snape moved to the cabinet which opened with a softly cast spell. Harry twisted to try to see what was inside but all he could make out were many differently coloured objects. Snape removed six vials and carried them over. He lined four of them up on the edge of the tub. Admiring them, Harry reached out a hand to touch one when Snape slapped his hand and opened the thin red vial. “Drink, and don’t spill a drop.”

Harry obediently quaffed the potion. It burned down his throat and immediately spread a dull fire throughout his body. He coughed and sputtered but Snape pressed a thick, short blue vial into his hand. “Now drink this.”

Harry shook his head and tried to catch his breath but Snape clamped his fingers over Harry’s nose and poured the thick liquid down his throat. The fingers holding the vial pressed up against Harry’s chin as soon as all the contents had been spilled into his mouth and he was forced to swallow all of the liquid before he was allowed breath again. The second vial’s contents didn’t seem to cause any reaction as far as Harry could tell. When Snape uncorked the third, similar in shape and size to the second but dark green in colour, Harry knew better to resist and drank it as quickly as his throat would allow. That one seemed to make every inch of his skin itch, although the obnoxious feeling passed before long.

The final vial was as thick as his wrist and half as long. It contained a milky white substance that smelled like wet rags. Harry held his nose as he darted out his tongue to taste it. Luckily, it didn’t taste nearly half as bad as it smelled and he tried to drink it as rapidly as he could.

Snape returned to his position on the far wall. “Your memories should return shortly after you finish that potion. If you fail to remember who I am after that, I will assume the head injury is permanent.”

“That’s bad, right?” asked Harry between gulps. When Snape didn’t answer he shrugged and finished off the vial. He set the vial carefully down. “I don’t think it wo-“ He was interrupted when his brain seemed to explode. He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to keep it in as his hands flew to try and hold his skull in place. His lungs burned and all he felt was fire before darkness overcame him.

I don't like the double space either but I can't figure out how to fix it! I was trying to do a single space with indent which is how I have it in Word and it works sometimes, but othertimes, the second space automatically appears. I have no idea why.

I think it's because Word adds lots of extraneous stuff if you convert a Word file to html, is that what you're doing?

I write my fanfic in notepad, then add the html tags for things such as italics etc. myself as LJ will automatically just add one space, if that's what you had in notepad (or any other simpler editor.)

Word makes everything go wonky, LOL!

You're story sounds intriguing, but I'm waiting for it to be finished before I start reading, LOL!

Indents are really only used for paper books, reading on screen is different, a space is all you need between paragraphs, you don't need any indents at all.

I do write it in word first and then try to convert it. I guess I could try copy/pasting it into notepad first, but I can't write in notepad other than lists and such because I don't like the format.

Thanks for the advice! A lot of people have told me that they are waiting for it to be finished before they start reading. Unfortunately, you are probably going to have to wait a couple more months at the least. I have 15 chapters left to flesh out.